Update RPM to 4.8

Summary

Owner

Current status

Detailed Description

The RPM development team would like to update Fedora RPM to a pre-release version of 4.8 as early as possible to leverage the wide testing that Fedora rawhide and beta releases get. A stable upstream version of the new RPM is expected be released in time for Fedora 13.

Scope

No new binary package-level incompatibilities have been introduced, so produced packages are fully compatible with RPM 4.7. Packages directly depending on librpm need to be rebuilt due to soname change, no other rebuilds necessary.

Test Plan

Has survived dist-upgrades, huge installs, rebuilds of complex packages, yum updates, and the included test suite.

Fedora build infrastructure

Building packages individually with rpmbuild (dist-cvs and otherwise). Tested on a large package set, no known major issues.

Building packages in mock: a large number of packages of varying complexity (kernel, gcc, glibc, glib2, anaconda...) have been successfully built in mock with the new rpm.

Python bindings need special attention due to the amount of code changes. Yum and smartpm regularly tested but further testing needed.

User Experience

The new RPM changes very little in the average "user experience":

Faster installs/upgrades

Some annoying bugs have been fixed

Packaging experience has minor enhancements

Dependencies

No new dependencies.

Contingency Plan

Revert to 4.7. Some new macros and build-time spec features have been added, but as long as packagers avoid using them until final acceptance is gained, there are no incompatibilities introduced.